Champion on the Light
by Speaker for the Dead aka 17
Summary: Janeway banishes Chakotay on a one-week shuttle mission alone after he crosses THE line...
1. Default Chapter

onchaks1 ****

Champion in the Light

A _Voyager_ fanfic by Lt. Taya 17 Janeway (TaTTooGaL™)

Come to think of it, it was a pretty stupid thing to do, but he wasn't really thinking when he did it. Blame the stupidity of the human mind, that blatant impulsiveness which drives men to do the most illogical things. He immediately regretted it, of course, but it was too late to do anything but apologize. Which, as every man who offends a woman knows, isn't always the easiest thing to do.

It all started innocuously enough. They had dinner together, in his quarters, and when they were done it was fairly late at night so he offered to escort her back to her quarters. There was nothing implied in that gesture; he was just trying to be a gentleman. So she accepted with a smile, and he did just that, carrying on their conversation from dinner all the way to her door where they bade each other good night. And then he made his mistake.

He kissed her.

It was nothing, really, just a simple peck on the cheek done in the spur of the moment, (well, she _did_ look so cute in that dress…) but her reaction was instantaneous. Her body stiffened and she recoiled from him like he'd turned into a serpent, gave him and icy glare and said, "I'll see you on the bridge tomorrow." And then she retreated to her room.

As the door slid shut in his face, he thought, _damn_!

It was worse than anyone had expected. She didn't just refuse to talk to Chakotay about it. She just refused to talk to Chakotay, period. Worse still, she went out of her way to avoid him, which wasn't good because, firstly, it was pretty dang annoying, and secondly, it was generating more than its fair share of gossip and rumors amongst the crewmembers, the last the thing the ship needed.

Tom was making the same observations to Harry, who was working on the isolinear relays in Astrometrics. "You notice anything weird about the captain and Commander Chakotay today?" 

"Anything weird? Like what?" 

"Come on, Harry, you're not serious! Surely you've noticed that they aren't on speaking terms anymore!" 

Harry looked up, slightly annoyed. "Tom, you're over-dramatizing." 

"It's the truth! Look, this morning B'Elanna and I were talking to the captain in the Mess Hall when he came along and she… well, I wouldn't say she just turned and ran in the opposite direction, but it was close." 

"Coincidence." 

"So, just how many words did they exchange on the bridge the last time you were there?" 

Harry paused in thought and couldn't come up with a suitable answer. "Okay, fine, you win. So they've been avoiding each other. So what? She's probably just temporarily angry at him… again." 

"Lover's quarrel." 

Harry rolled his eyes. "What_ever_…" He punched a few more commands into the console in front of him and grumbled, "They're not lovers." 

"That's what they claim. Married men like me can smell woman trouble a mile away. And this ship isn't even a mile long." 

Harry, painfully aware of his bachelor's status, made no move to comment on this.

"He must have done something really awful to her…" mused Tom. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" 

"I don't know what you're thinking, Tom," replied Harry, more than slightly annoyed now, "so why don't you just enlighten me?" 

Tom remained silent for a while, and the thought struck Harry. "No. You're not seriously thinking that." 

Tom grinned cheekily at him. "Think what, Harry? That the two of them-" 

Harry fought the impulse to clamp one hand over his friend's mouth. "You don't have to say it out loud!" 

"But you can't think of any other explanation, can you," persisted Tom. "He hasn't broken any orders lately and we haven't had too many serious crises lately…" 

"Maybe," suggested Harry slowly and patiently, "he kept annoying her with wild speculation and gossip about the love lives of other crew members." 

Tom ignored his sarcasm completely.

"I mean, part of the reason why they're not together is probably because of people like you who revel in pointless scandals and sensationalism!" 

Tom shrugged. "Hey, it keeps life on this ship interesting…" 

"Life on this ship is interesting enough as it is, thank you very much. I didn't really need to hear all that." 

Tom scowled. "What's wrong with you today, Harry? I thought I came here to have a really interesting conversation, but I think maybe talking to Toby the Targ might have been more effective, because at least he'd have kept it one-sided!" 

"Maybe the fact that I'm trying to get some serious work done here and I'm not really in the mood to talk to anyone about anything, much less something as trivial as this, might factor a little in it, hmm?" 

At this point Seven dived to his rescue my marching over and imperiously informing Tom, "Making pointless small talk does not aid in improving the efficiency of the isolinear relays, Lieutenant. Perhaps you should just… get lost." 

Tom's eyes widened at that, but he kept his composure. "Aren't we all already lost in the Delta Quadrant?" he ribbed Seven as he made his retreat. As the door slid shut they could see him shaking his head and muttering.

"Thanks," grumbled Harry to Seven as he resumed his interrupted work. Seven smiled enigmatically and went back to her station.

******

Janeway was in her ready room, sipping her usual mug of coffee and pondering about what Seven overheard in a conversation between Tom and Harry, Surely it wasn't _that_ obvious that she was avoiding Chakotay? After all it had barely been a day…

Whatever it was, this that she was going to do was going to make it more obvious… but it seemed like a good path to take nonetheless.

Her door chimed. She knew it was Chakotay, so she pushed the relevant padd to the center of the table and silently allowed Chakotay in.

To his credit he didn't act too uncomfortable, but he picked up the padd with a slight touch of unease. "What's this?" he asked.

"Read it," she replied, without looking up.

He read it and she could sense rather than she the tightening of his lips, the tension growing in his body. "You're sending me to observe a dark matter nebula in a shuttle, by myself, for one whole week." 

She glanced up icily at him. "Objections?" 

"None at all," he said heavily. "Just that…" _what the heck have I done to deserve this?_

"Just that?" 

"Nothing," he mumbled, anticipating and not looking forward to the prospect of the next week.

She sighed, feeling slightly sorry for him. "Look… I know you're not too happy about it, but it's in the best interests of the ship and its crew. We can talk more about this when you come back from this mission." 

He tucked the padd under his arm and left without a word.

*******

He was fuming by the time he reached the shuttle _Sausalito_. For a brief, childish moment in his quarters he'd considered packing all his things into the shuttle, leaving and never coming back, until he realized that running away wasn't going to solve anything. So he resolved to sulk and maintain complete radio silence for the entire duration of his journey. If she wasn't going to talk, neither was he.

He tapped the controls with more force than necessary as he guided the shuttle out of the dock. He had no clue as to how the rest of the crew would react to the playing out of this little scene, but most of them had probably figured by now that all wasn't too well between the captain and the commander. He was being exiled for a week, for goodness' sake. And all because he what? Tried to be too nice to her?

He managed to stick to his resolution for the first few hours and ignore all the underhand "Report, Commander!" messages from the _Voyager_. But after a while he realized if he was going on for the whole week like this, he was going to get pretty dang bored. One certainly couldn't expect him to meditate all week… he sighed.

He switched to the last message from _Voyager_, a one-liner which simply went "Talk, Commander… please?" probably sent by Harry Kim, from the looks of it. What should he reply? "I'm fine, stop bothering me, it's getting on my nerves"?

The console beeped again and another message replaced Harry's. "Earth to Commander Chakotay. Chakotay, please respond. We've been waiting for more than six years, but you never answer our calls…" That was definitely Tom Paris. Chakotay rolled his eyes. The message changed again. "_Voyager_ to lost shuttle _Sausalito_. Is anyone out there?" 

Chakotay decided that maybe sitting there and letting Paris' inventive messages come in one after another might provide adequate entertainment for the rest of the week. But he didn't exactly want to send the rest of the crew into a panic attack just because his captain was acting like a spoilt child, either. So he decided to reply… just this once.

But before he could get very far, the shuttle rocked violently. Chakotay hit his head on the console in front of him, hard, and crumpled to the floor in a dazed heap. Before he slipped into unconsciousness, he saw all the power on the shuttle flicker weakly once and go out.

******

"What do you mean, you've lost all contact with the shuttle?" asked Janeway, annoyed. She stood in the center of the bridge, glaring at Harry, who was whitening visibly. 

"I mean that the shuttle simply just disappeared from our sensors. We didn't detect anything around it when it happened… it was just as though it never existed."

"Could it be some sort of damping field from the dark matter nebula?" she asked.

"Unfortunately, no. I'm still getting readings for third degree black body radiation as well as neutrino flux for that entire sector." Harry frowned. "I can't explain the disappearance of that shuttle." 

"Did Commander Chakotay mention anything unusual happening?" 

Harry and Tom exchanged a tense glance. "Well… no, actually," Harry replied truthfully and reluctantly. "He said nothing at all." 

"_Nothing_ at all," hinted Tom from the helm.

Janeway put her hands on her hips and sighed, rolling her eyes a little. "You don't have to rub _that_ in, Lieutenant." Fine, if he insisted on being childish and immature, she wasn't going to do anything about it. "Carry on as usual, Mr. Kim." 

"But…" spluttered Harry. "What about the shuttle?" 

"What about it? The shuttle will be fine, and it'll be back within the week." She began for the turbolift. "You have the bridge, Mr. Kim. If you need anything, I'll be in my quarters." 

"Captain!" protested Harry. "That shuttle has your first officer on it and it just disappeared for no apparent reason! Aren't you going to even bother looking for it?" 

Janeway turned to glare at Harry, arms akimbo. "No, I'm not, and that's final." 

Three hours later the _Delta Flyer_ launched from the _Voyager_, carrying one Captain Janeway in search of the shuttle _Sausalito_.

******

When she arrived at the last known coordinates of the shuttle, her heart sank. It was there, all right, just as she had expected. But it also looked like it had been rammed into the back of a Borg Cube, which wasn't what she'd expected. 

She beamed over to the shuttle armed with a large compression phaser rifle- not an easy task to do alone- and a large medikit. She needn't have bothered. The interior of the shuttle was as still as a grave. "Chakotay?" she called out, noting with detached interest that her voice echoed hollowly in the shuttle's empty bridge. The entire shuttle was dark and completely drained of power, as if someone had come along and sucked it dry. It wasn't even leaving a sizeable ion trail for the acute sensors of the _Voyager_ to pick up.

She was worried. Maintaining total radio silence for several hours was one thing, but deserting like this was something that Chakotay would never do. He was too loyal to the ship. Too loyal to her. At that thought an inexplicable lump rose up in her throat as she remembered she'd been nothing but abominable towards him since the night before. Not like he'd actually done anything wrong… She berated herself. At least if they'd maintained radio contact with each other she'd at least have some clue as to what was going on. She began regretting not having brought Tuvok along. She needed someone to talk to, and all she was going to get now was this dead shuttle.

She picked up her tricorder and ran a surface scan of the shuttle's interior. A small anomaly caught her eye: an unusual neutrino flux density pattern, the same one that had prompted her to send Chakotay out to investigate the dark matter nebula. Without fully rationalizing it, she realized that the key to all her problems. She headed back to the _Delta Flyer_.

******

His world was nothing but a sea of blackness. Groaning, Chakotay rubbed at his face and opened his eyes.

His world was nothing but a sea of blackness.

Shocked, Chakotay sat up and blinked rapidly, convinced that he was just slow to wake up.

His world was still nothing but a sea of blackness.

Unbelieving, he put his hands in front of where his face was supposed to be. He couldn't see a thing. He tapped the back of his wrist to make sure he wasn't dreaming, but he couldn't see a thing, much less Terra's moon. For one horrible moment he thought he'd gone blind. Then he noticed the bright retinal flashes he saw streaking across his field of vision. Optical illusions, but it showed that at least his eyes were still working. 

He figured that he first and foremost, wasn't on his shuttle anymore, nor was he anywhere near or on _Voyager_. He had probably been attacked and kidnapped; for what purpose, he didn't know. His tormentors had placed probably him into a sensory deprivation chamber to drive him out of his mind. He'd heard of them being used in the barbaric pasts of Terra's history: no light, no sound, no nothing. But he wasn't unduly worried about it. Sooner or later his captain would come rescue him.

He hoped.

******

Over the intercom to the _Voyager_, Harry Kim's voice sounded strained. "We didn't even get a visual from these ransomers," he told Janeway plaintively. "All they want from us are a few key technologies which we can't give away, like the warp core, firstly because it's against the Prime Directive, and secondly it's the only one we have." 

Janeway gritted her teeth as she prepared to plunge into the dark matter nebula. "Tell them they're not going to get anything from us. Not our warp core, not our antimatter and definitely not our first officer." 

"Aye, Captain. _Voyager_ out." 

She took a deep steadying breath. At last the problem was beginning to take shape: Chakotay had been captured by a bunch of galactic thieves who would only return him in exchange for some merchandize. Their philosophy disgusted Janeway entirely. It was boorish, immoral and puerile. She took the _Delta Flyer_ out of warp and was instantly surprised.

In spite of their name, dark matter nebulas were actually invisible to everything but the most dedicated of sensors. The dense opaque mass of an unidentifiable substance hanging before the _Delta Flyer_ certainly was anything but one. Yet it was emitting all the characteristic radiation, bells and whistles of a dark matter nebula. The readings were slightly anomalous, to be sure, but it was still identifiable. Janeway frowned. Whatever it was, it was obviously engineered to generate those readings. A stealth device, if anything. She radioed a message to _Voyager_, then guided the _Delta Flyer_ into the dark cloud.

The interior of the cloud was pitch-black, and would have been impossible to navigate if not for the large, luminous ship sitting in the middle of it. It glowed bright and white in the middle of all the blackness. If Chakotay was anywhere, it had to be on that ship. Janeway inched the _Delta Flyer_ closer.


	2. CHapter 2

onchaks2 ****

Champion in the Light (Part Two)

A _Voyager_ fanfic by Lt. Taya 17 Janeway (TaTTooGaL™)

Chakotay didn't know how much longer he could take being cooped up in the darkness. Already he was beginning to hallucinate the strangest things, seeing shadows and intangible dancing figures where there should have been none. He was still wearing his commbadge, but the _Voyager_ persistently remained out of range. 

In the meantime he occupied himself by brooding over his current situation. He was beginning to suspect that the _Voyager_ might actually be ignorant of his plight, since he hadn't made any attempt to communicate with them in the first few hours anyway. That had just been plain stupid. It might take them days, even weeks, to realize that something had gone seriously wrong. They might never find him. He wanted to run his head against a wall, but he didn't dare move in this uncertain blackness. He remained where he was, sitting cross-legged on some sort of cold metallic surface, brooding.

Why had he acted so childishly? He wondered of himself. So she was angry with him. She had every right to be. How many times had she herself stressed that the relationship between them was strictly professional? And he should have known her better: any advances he made, no matter how small or unobtrusive, would inevitably bring down those emotional walls he'd come to dread. Stupid, stupid, stupid…

In frustration he leaned back and found another hard metal surface, this time at right angles to the one he was sitting on. Perfect for head bashing. He experimentally thumped his head on it a few times. It made an odd reverberating sound. Intrigued, he tapped on it with his fingers. Then he wandered around, tapping to hear if he could detect any weaknesses. About half a foot away from where his head was his fingers abruptly encountered a material which gave a duller sound. More like acrylic than metal. A porthole, perhaps? He craned his neck backwards to see it he could make out any difference between the darkness here and the the nothingness there.

Then the _Delta Flyer_ flashed across his vision briefly.

__

Another _hallucination_, he thought in disgust. He went back to bashing his head against the wall.

******

Janeway approached the ship slowly, scanning her way through. She was painfully aware that the pitch-black backdrop made the approach of any ship highly obvious to its occupants, but she needed all the information she could get on this mysterious starship. She noticed that its luminous white skin was broken in even rows of jet-black squares, almost like portals. On board the ship were many concentrated pockets of the odd neutrino flux densities that she'd been reading. She assumed, for now, that they belonged to the owners of this ship.

She managed to pinpoint Chakotay's location within the ship by seeking his commbadge signal- assuming, of course, that he was still wearing it. Now she needed to find a way in. There was a docking bay of sorts near the aft vents of the ship. Scans confirmed that it contained a breathable oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere. A forcefield protected it, but it was weak and she could drill into it without much difficulty.

The interior of the ship seemed to be made of the same luminous material as the outside. Ceilings blended into bulkheads into decks into a white infinity. If she was scanning right, Chakotay was incarcerated in a cell of some sort about fifty meters away from the bay. She had to hurry.

******

It was all very abrupt. One moment he'd been sitting in utter complete darkness, and in the next a blinding white light had enveloped him. His eyes stung at the sudden intensity and he squeezed them shut with an involuntary cry.

Someone was pulling him up by the arm. He risked squinting one eye open to see who it was. The captain. Relief flooded him as she led him out of his dark cell into the bright, painful light.

"Where is this?" he asked, opening his eyes in stages as they gradually grew accustomed to light again. He seemed to be standing in an endless infinity of pure white light now. He could have been in a cell a meter square or a chamber large enough to hold the entire _Voyager_- he couldn't tell.

"You were kidnapped," replied Janeway tersely. "This is the kidnapper's ship. It seems to have been modified and masked to resemble a dark matter nebula, probably so that nobody would come looking for it." 

"But you did." 

"Obviously. I wasn't going to give in to their requests for our warp core just to get you back." She began walking. "They already know I'm here. We have to move fast- the Delta Flyer's just parked south of here." 

Chakotay kept pace with his captain, trusting her to navigate him through this featureless white world. "So I guess this means you're talking to me again?" 

"I don't know what you mean." 

He stepped in front of her. "You _know_, Captain." He shifted slightly to block her way as she tried to continue walking, and she folded her arms with a vaguely annoyed expression. He sighed. "Look, I'm sorry about yesterday night, alright? I shouldn't have done it, but even so… it was just a platonic gesture! It meant nothing!" 

"Then why did you do it?" 

"I just thought it would be nice!" 

"_Nice_? Is that all you have to say about it?" 

He was the annoyed one now. "Yes! And I don't know why you're so worked up about it! In fact…" he waved his arm slightly expansively. "I don't know why you're so tense about this whole… situation between us." 

"Chakotay, we've been through this so many times…" 

"And I still don't understand it." His voice rose as he gathered momentum. "As a matter of fact, I've decided that there's only one reason for this. You're afraid of me." 

Her eyes narrowed. "I beg your pardon?" 

He stood his ground. "You're afraid of me- or more precisely, getting committed with me." 

She folded her arms. "That's not true." 

"Yes it is. Why else would you be hiding?" 

"Protocol-" 

"-be damned. We're in the Delta Quadrant. How many Starfleet rules and regulations have you bent so far just to make our journey through easier? And I've read the whole rulebook from end to end. There's nothing in there that specifically says you can't get involved with another member of your crew." 

Her voice hardened. "As captain of the ship, I think it's my prerogative to set the rules and as long as you are a member of my crew you will follow them!" 

"But it still doesn't hide the fact that you're afraid!" 

She pierced him with a look of iron. "I'm beginning to regret coming for you!" 

"You can't say it," he taunted, ignoring her. "Go ahead. Look me in the eye and say it loud and clear. Say that you aren't afraid of getting committed." 

They were standing face to face now, and she looked so angry that for a moment he thought he'd pushed his luck slightly too far. But still he stood his ground.

Then she laughed.

It was the reaction Chakotay had least expected. He frowned. "What's so funny?" 

She paused for breath and burst out laughing again, leaning against in him in mirth. "Oh, Chakotay…. here we are, stuck on a hostile ship in the middle of a false nebula 30,000 light years away from Earth, and we're arguing like a couple of children." She gazed up at him. "Isn't it funny?" 

He began to laugh too, the tension between them broken. "Okay, so I was rather off-point. I guess that's what you get for locking a man up in a dark room for hours with nothing to do but let his imagination run wild." He sighed. "And I guess I haven't exactly been… behaving well these few days." 

Her mouth quirked slightly, then she too sighed and looked down at her feet, carefully considering what she should say next. When she looked up again, her eyes were filled with regret and the merest hint of embarrassment. "Actually, I should be the one apologizing. I … overreacted when it was nothing but a trivial matter." She blinked. "And maybe… just maybe, you might have a point there."

He offered her a hand. "We're quits, then?" 

She chuckled. "Whatever you say. A truce." She grasped his hand. Then her tricorder started beeping. "Damn." 

"I gather that this isn't a good sign." 

"It isn't." She began walking again. "I programmed it to alert me when one pocket of those neutrino flux irregularities grows too close." 

"Which means?" 

"One of your kidnappers is near." She glanced down at her tricorder. "And gaining." 

They began to run.

As Chakotay slammed himself into the seat of the Delta Flyer he risked a look outside. "I don't see anyone coming." 

"Chakotay, with a ship built like this, do you honestly think that the occupants of this ship are going to be humanoid in form?" She glanced at him with an eyebrow raised.

He considered that fact. "I guess not." 

"Then we'd better get moving." Her fingers danced over the consoles. "I'll pilot the ship, and you can shoot." 

"Got it." He secured himself down as the Delta Flyer moved out of the ship. With alarm he noted two previously unseen diaphanous white shapes following them out of the bay. "And those are?" 

"Pockets of neutrino flux irregularities," she replied, shifting the Flyer into evasive maneuvers.

The Delta Flyer was rocked violently as one form elongated and lashed out at their port nacelle. "Nasty," commented Chakotay. He fired a spread of phasers at the shape. "It doesn't seem to be having any effect." 

"Just keep at it," ordered Janeway as she piloted the ship out of the dark cloud. "The _Voyager_ should be here by now." 

The other shape moved to attack the Flyer, and Chakotay fired phasers at it again. He kept up his pattern of alternately firing at one shape and then at the other, tracking them as they darted across his field of vision. It worked at least; their energy levels were dropping and they were keeping a certain radius from the Flyer.

Then abruptly they were out of the cloud, and the comforting shape of the _Voyager_ loomed in the vicinity. The two shapes seemed to realize they were outnumbered, and retreated back to the darkness of the cloud. Chakotay slumped in relief. "Well, that's that." He gave the captain a funny glance. "Who were they anyway?" 

"I have no idea. They didn't even identify themselves when they hailed us. But it's a safe bet that we won't be having much problems with them in the future again." 

Chakotay grinned in spite of himself. "Well, we certainly make a great team, don't we?" 

She smiled back. "I'm not denying that." She patted his hand. "Come on. Let's go home." 

******

Things had mostly returned to normal on the ship, now that the momentary conflict between the captain and the commander had been resolved. It had slipped out of the memories of the crew almost immediately as other more pressing concerns had arisen. 

But Chakotay hadn't forgotten. A week to the day found him outside his captain's quarters with a bunch of flowers and an enigmatic smile. 

When he entered, she was lounging on her couch with a book and a cup of coffee. She looked up. "Is there anything wrong, Chakotay?" 

He handed her the flowers, a bunch of white roses with red edges. Her eyes widened as she accepted the bouquet. "What's this for?" 

"An apology. For my… boorish behavior last week," he told her with a dry smile.

Her features melted. "Oh… they're beautiful, Chakotay. You shouldn't have spent so many rations on this." 

"And for whatever I said to you on that ship… " he added.

"Oh. That." She didn't seem to enjoy the memory. "Well…" she said, gingerly putting down the bouquet, "I have been thinking about that a lot these few days." She sighed and folded her arms. "And I guess that you're probably right." 

"I am?" Seeing the look on her face he held up a hand to stop her barrage. "No, seriously. I just said it on the spur of the moment. I wasn't really thinking." 

"But you were right, nonetheless." She picked up one exquisite bloom and fingered the petals. "Taking charge of one ship, no matter how big or small, is a big responsibility, Chakotay, and I don't want to compromise my duties just because I'm getting carried away with my personal life. So, yes… I guess I am afraid to commit myself. In a way." Her mouth quirked slightly. "If you think I'm pushing you away too much, I probably am. It's all my fault." 

"I'm not blaming you for anything, Kathryn." He gave her a warm smile. "You've been a wonderful friend. Except…" his smile took on an evil touch. "When you're trying to get me out of the way." 

She swatted at him with her padd. "Low blow!" she protested, laughing.

He laughed. "Thankfully, you don't do it often." 

She smiled, her tone growing wistful. "Of course not. It's lonely enough out here for anyone to lose a friend." At Chakotay's rejoining smile, she added, "And it detracts from the spirit of harmony we've cultivated so carefully on this ship for six and a half years. I'll try to avoid doing that in the future, I promise." She looked up at him, mischief twinkling in her eye. "But only if you promise not to try to kiss me anymore." 

"Of course not. In fact," he said, his evil smile expanding, "you could test me on that right now. I've booked the holodeck for the next two hours." 

She shot him a playful look. "Was it my imagination, or was that an invitation?" 

"Would you accept it if it was?" 

She put down the padd, her smile growing wider. "Well, I don't know. I certainly don't want a repeat of last week. Even being kidnapped by the Borg might not save you then." 

"Oh, I'll behave myself this time, I promise," he chuckled. "I don't fancy being sold off to the Borg for a few pounds of decent coffee." 

"I'll be sure to keep them on the line just in case," she joked back, and he laughed. 

She gazed at the man standing before her, and for a brief moment she seemed to see him in a new, odd light. She looked at him and for the first time in a long while didn't see her first officer, her subordinate, or what she expected from him in terms of work and relationships. All she saw was _him_. Her friend. That smirk on his face, the dimple in his cheek, the way he held his hand out to her. Always there when she needed someone to depend on, when she needed to love, to laugh, or to be comforted. Always there for her. Feeling light and closer to home, she took her friend's hand as they left her quarters together.

****

_________THE END_________

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